CALIFORNIAN SPECIAL REPORT: James Lamb: The making of a sex offender

Court records document interview in which Lamb says he got his start at age 6

Jun. 8, 2009

James Lamb / Submitted Photo

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The home at 1230 River Road where convicted sex offender James Lamb reportedly is staying. / Richard Green

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EDITOR'S NOTE: The Salinas Californian sent repeated, unanswered requests to James Lamb for an interview. This story, published in Saturday's edition of The Californian, is built from court documents dating back to 1983 and obtained from Monterey County Superior Court.

James Vincent Lamb said he was just 6 years old when he had his first sexual encounter with a boy.

It was the 1960s, and the boy was his cousin, he said.

In the years that followed, according to his psychiatrist, Lamb became the molester.

When he was 7, Lamb would invite his school friends to his house for sleepovers. Once they were there, he would build a relationship a process called "grooming" to prepare them for sex acts.

When he was 11, Lamb said, he continued a daily sexual relationship with a female relative and a cousin.

The Arizona native recounted these graphic details of his past and more in a three-day interview in October 2001 with Atascadero State Hospital psychiatrist Dr. Dawn Starr, according to court records obtained by The Salinas Californian.

By the time he reached puberty, Lamb said, he had had sexual encounters with more than a dozen boys.

When he was about 15, Lamb admitted in the interview, he molested more children. Some of them were as young as 5. He dated girls for "image control."

By the time he was 18, Lamb said, he had committed sex acts with 40 other boys.

In the late 1970s, when Lamb was in his late teens, he joined the U.S. Coast Guard "to get away from sexual contact with boys," he told Starr.

While in the Coast Guard, he was stationed in Monterey and Point Reyes.

Since becoming an adult, Lamb said, he committed sex acts with 30 children.

Starr explained that Lamb was able to coach his victims to the point he believed that "what he was doing was pleasing to the boys."

He learned who would tell on him and who wouldn't.

While in the Coast Guard, Lamb told Starr, he took a part-time job at an arcade so he could be around children.

When he was 19 on Dec. 28, 1978 Lamb married Carolyn Beth Brown while serving in the Coast Guard, divorce records show. They had two daughters, now ages 26 and 29.

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In the 2001 interview with Starr, Lamb described the union as a "marriage of convenience."

Lamb continued to look at "hard-core" child pornography daily.

On Sept. 15, 1983, court records show, Brown moved out of their home on Cherokee Drive in Salinas. Lamb "would not take the responsibility of being an adult in the relationship," divorce records show.

Then, on Oct. 31, 1983 five days after he was arrested by Salinas police ' she was granted a temporary restraining order. Brown requested the restraining order, court records show, because she feared for the safety of her two young children.

Lamb was accused, at age 24, of molesting two boys, as well as a girl (which he denied). The boys told their parents that Lamb molested them on Oct. 25, 1983. According to The Californian's archives, Lamb came to know the boys through their parents. They went to the same day-care facility as his daughters.

In the interview with Starr, Lamb said he invited the boys over to his home for the night and sexually molested them when they bathed with his daughter. After the bath, he told Starr, he continued molesting the boys.

In April 1984, Lamb was convicted on one count of oral copulation with a child under 11 years of age. Two months later, his marriage officially ended.

Repeated attempts by The Californian to reach Brown were unsuccessful.

Back behind bars

In prison, he told Starr, he continued sexually fantasizing about children while performing sex acts with another inmate. He wrote child pornography "in exchange for compensation."

Paroled in 1985, Lamb went to work for an insurance billing company in Northridge for a year. According to court records, Lamb came back to Monterey County a while later, moving in with a single mother and her 13-year-old son in Salinas.

In the interview with Starr, Lamb said he was attracted to the teen's younger friends.

To entice them, court records show, Lamb kept computer games and children's activities in his room. He admitted molesting two boys, ages 9 and 11, in his room. He told Starr that he also made a sexually explicit video of the 11-year-old.

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To keep the boys from telling, he bribed them with gifts.

On Dec. 5, 1991, at age 32, Lamb was convicted of three counts of molesting children under the age of 14, court records show. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

Records of his 1991 arrest likely were destroyed, said the clerk of the Monterey County Superior Court.

He spent the next six years in San Quentin State Prison.

While in prison, Lamb told Starr, he continued to seek out other child sex offenders using information he obtained while serving as a clerk. He also continued writing child porn. In 1995, court records show, he was disciplined for writing a sexually explicit story.

Lamb was paroled from prison on July 7, 1997.

Barely three weeks later, an apartment manager gave his parole officer a letter that Lamb received from an inmate he knew. The inmate, also a pedophile, had responded to a letter from Lamb that included contacts with the North American Man/Boy Love Association, or NAMBLA, a group that advocates sexual freedom with children.

Lamb was taken into custody. In March 1998, he was sent to Atascadero State Hospital to undergo treatment under the Sexually Violent Predator program, which provides treatment that specifically addresses sexual deviancy disorder.

Surgery and treatment

In January 2003, court records show, Lamb underwent an orchiectomy surgery to remove his testicles at Sanger General Hospital in Fresno County.

According to treating psychiatrist Dr. Gabrielle Paladino, who testified in 2006, Lamb was diagnosed with pedophilia, or "recurrent sexual urges regarding young children," which essentially overwhelm a person's thoughts, urges and behaviors. Paladino described Lamb's obsession with children as a "fixation that comes from the brain" and is fueled by testosterone.

Moreover, she testified, Lamb also is narcissistic, which causes characteristics including having a lack of empathy and having control issues. This causes pedophilia "to be much worse," Paladino said.

"It's not something you can get rid of by cutting the testes," she testified. "Mr. Lamb is still a pedophile. He still suffers the mental disorder, and he may live with it forever. That behavior tends to be very deep-rooted."

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Still, she testified, the surgery does lessen the symptoms of pedophilia where there is partial remission.

Adjusting with release

In July 2007, Monterey County Superior Court Judge Richard Curtis granted his petition for conditional release from the Sexually Violent Predator program.

Because of a bill passed in 2004, authored by then-Assemblyman and now Supervisor Simon Salinas, Lamb could not be released anywhere other than the county where he was convicted.

The state said each sexual offender released conditionally must wait a year and prove successful assimilation into society before petitioning for unconditional release, which would allow them to move to another county or state.

Until it is granted, Lamb must stay put and that means residing in Monterey County.

After nearly two years of failed attempts to find him a home, the state finally found him a room in a house owned by Steve and Valerie Migotti at 1230 River Road south of Salinas. Lamb moved in with them March 27.

When his year is up next spring, his lawyer Deana Davis said he plans to move to Arizona to live with his mother.